Exposure science is the study of the contact between humans (and other organisms) and harmful agents within their environment – whether it be chemical, physical, biological, behavioural or mental stressors – with the aim of identifying the causes and preventions of the adverse health effects they result in.
[2] By tightly integrating the fields of epidemiology, toxicology, biochemistry, environmental science and risk assessment, holistic comprehension of an exposure is achieved to protect human and ecosystem health on an individual, community and global levels.
[1] Though the history of exposure science had an initial slow start, developments have significantly accelerated in the past three decades,[7] including the beginnings of the formation of the "exposome".
In 2003, it was discovered that liver damage in fish in Puget Sound (Washington State) was linked to water contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons found in coal and gasoline.
[15][16] The production of greenhouse gases from sources such as transport and agriculture has been strongly linked to global warming,[17] which is subsequently causing rising sea-levels and damage to the environments in which many species live within.
For example, exposure to vitamin B12 deficient diets can cause hyperhomocysteinemia, which increases oxidative stress within the body leading to the possible development of vascular dementia and stroke.
[citation needed] If a dose exceeds it's toxicity threshold, it has the potential to cause some biological effect which results in disease within the organism.
[1][2] The concept of the exposome was first defined by Christopher Paul Wild[8] as the "life-course environmental exposures (including lifestyle factors), from the prenatal period onwards."
[10] The idea stemmed from the pre-existing concept of the 'genome', the complete set of genetically encoded instructions which function the body, of which Wild focussed on throughout his career in exposure assessment and cancer genomics.
He concluded the need for the 'exposome', like the genome, to map the complete set of environmental exposures a human encounters throughout the course of their lifetime in order to easily prevent and identify sources of exposure-caused chronic diseases, along with target age groups.
This included biomarker omics (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics and immunomics), sensor technologies (e.g. using mobile phones to measure physical activity, stress, sleep rhythms) and imaging (for diets, social interactions).